Alien: Covenant Set Reports *Spoilers

Started by Anthony, Mar 01, 2017, 02:09:30 AM

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Alien: Covenant Set Reports *Spoilers (Read 45,323 times)

Mustangjeff

My biggest, admittedly pre-conceived, trepidation about Covenant is that there will be a lack of Engineer backstory.  A crazy slasher monster created by mad scientist robot doesn't really interest me that much.  It's the back story of the Engineers that is truly interesting to me.  I'm hoping some of this come out even if we don't see them.

David clearly knows what they were doing.  He did in Prometheus (sometimes to create, one must destroy) so he has to have a pretty good handle on it by now.

Corporal Hicks

http://www.joblo.com/horror-movies/news/alien-covenant-set-visit-2-michael-fassbender-katherine-waterston-huffam-745#.WLhn1367IJI.twitter

Joblo's second report. I think we've mined all the new info we're going to get from the set reports. I think it's largely going to be repeat information.

Morose

It is a shame they are not focusing on the engineers. I was looking forward to some sort of engineer battle where there were two factions. Elizabeth would probably join one faction while David ran off the possibly make deals with the Deacon character.

Still I do find it a bit interesting that these characters are still in the franchise and are developing

banecat

banecat

#78
that's my thing, i hope we get a sufficient amount of engineer content
at this point it's looking like we'll just see
Spoiler
a flashback showing david dropping black goo and wiping them out
[close]

Evanus

QuoteHe thinks that it will be a movie that absolutely delivers for the Prometheus fan base and the ALIEN fan base. He's not feeling anxious.
Well, I don't think Prometheus fans will like
Spoiler
Shaw and the engineers being killed off like it's nothing, and having almost no screentime.
[close]
:D

:'(

Corporal Hicks

QuoteLRM Online was allowed to visit Fox Studios Australia this past June where Ridely Scott was filming his latest chapter in the Alien series, Alien: Covenant. With limited time we were able to catch up with him while he was in between takes. Guided into a dimly lit stage we came across a massive set which consist of large heads which look like they are carved from stone. These large heads are know as the engineers or the elders that once had a civilization on this planet. Here is what he had to say about his latest film.

See more at: http://lrmonline.com/news/alien-covenant-director-ridley-scott-doesnt-think-of-alien-as-a-horror-film#sthash

Stolen

QuoteWhat's with all the heads?
Ridley Scott: If you ask me they were a people who were superior. These were probably the ten apostles, the wise men.  -

Better and better ! Prometheus is everywhere in Covenant


Ingwar

Here is what Joblo got out of a chat with Special Visual Effects Supervisor Neil Corbould:

QuoteAt the beginning of the movie they looked at all types of different blood, then they put a few tests onto film just to see what color they liked. They got it from all over the world. They made some of their own as well, and ended up using their own stuff, which was quite ironic, really, because they spent a few thousand dollars shipping it in from everywhere. Everyone has their own little recipe and they won't tell anyone else, and theirs is basically cornstarch and food coloring and that's it.

They have different types of blood like congealed blood and blood "chuckers", which are different sizes and shot out with compressed air. They put a cap (with different patterns) on top of a tube (think a shower head) so it gives a spray or a splurge or whatever else they need.

They made some alien blood as well, some black blood and the android white fluid. The red blood, they've probably made like a thousand liters of it.

They are trying to make the gore as realistic as possible, because that's what Ridley wants. He wants the shock factor.

Ridley loves to do things in camera. He doesn't like CG blood, doesn't like CG effects unless it is to complement the work that they do or to do set extensions. He loves realism. He wants a real alien running around the spaceship and stuff like that.

There are creatures there (guys in suits) and then the visual effects enhance them, which he thinks is the way to go, rather than having a complete CG character. At least there's a performer underneath the costume that is giving a performance.

They made one of the alien head with the teeth coming out and a facehugger that runs along the ground. But his job is more the mechanical effects, the big gimbals, the spaceships, and crashes and explosions.

They built the top half of the gimbal, on this little spaceship. They made the bottom half of it, then twisted it and turned it. It's sort of the size of a tennis court and there's a fight sequence set on top of it. At the time the spaceship is not in space, it's on an Earth-type of environment. It weighed 27 tons in reality and it was flying around with people hanging off of it, which Ridley loved. It gave him the opportunity to get a lot of wide angles of the spaceship, and it's real! The CG will put the rest of the engines on and stuff like that.

This movie is a huge action movie. It's one of those movies that never stops giving. Just when you think it might be over, something happens and it just keeps going on.

Doing the terraforming bay was tricky because it was this truck that was about 25 tons, and that had to slide down the spaceship and then go off the end to teeter for a bit. The logistics of it were arduous. And the schedule that they had to stick to was challenging. They went from the terraforming bay to the gimbal rig overnight. Hence they had to get everything from one stage to another. It was a logistical nightmare.

Ridley Scott's attention to detail is incredible and his knowledge of film is also incredible. He remembers the stuff he did on ALIEN like it was yesterday. Their briefing was to look at the first ALIEN and to bring a modern sort of twist to it. Ridley remembers absolutely everything about that movie. How they did the facehugger, and using the oysters, and all. He's an incredible filmmaker. This was his sixth movie with him and it's always great. He never gets bored of it. Ridley challenges him.

They shot two weeks in New Zealand. It was part of a set build. They had a beautiful backdrop of Milford Sound and they did quite the explosion there – in one take.

Ridley Scott is a role model for a lot of people in the film business. He puts all they younger guys to shame. When you're in meetings he'll turn up at 8 o'clock and he'll be there until 9, 10 o'clock at night, saying: "Have you had enough yet? You guys look tired. You should go and have some sleep." And then he'll go off to editing or something like that. He doesn't need the money anymore. It's just his love of film and making movies the way he wants to make them that drives him.

Technology has moved on. The hydraulics, pneumatics and electronics have all evolved quite a bit. ALIEN probably had 20 special effects crew members, they had 80 on this. Because the toys they got to handle were a lot more advanced than what they had 30, 40 years ago.

They couldn't go too far away from ALIEN, because obviously this is before ALIEN. They took a little bit of creative license here and there, but they had to keep in mind that ALIEN is the movie that we're heading toward.

As soon as the effects community heard they were doing another ALIEN everyone wanted to do the movie, from all over the world. It's got such a following within the film industry.

Ridley listened to the PROMETHEUS criticism: people wanted more aliens. They're going to get a lot more aliens. More than they probably anticipated.

In his opinion DEADPOOL and THE REVENANT changed the stigma about an R Rating as they made lots of money. So that opened the door for ALIEN COVENANT to go for a hard R.

http://www.joblo.com/horror-movies/news/alien-covenant-set-visit-1-what-we-learnedsaw-chat-with-fx-supervisor-128

Evanus

QuoteIf there was one thing that was made abundantly clear throughout the conversations on set, it's that Covenant, like Prometheus, is very much rooted in the idea of creation myths. Who created David? Man. Who created man? The Engineers. But who created the Engineers? And what comes next in the chain? What does man's creation create? Covenant is a film that looks to tell a broad-scale creation myth both backward and forwards at the same time. While it brings us closer to the events of Alien, to the birth of the biomechanical Xenomorph we all know and love, it also continues to look back at the story of human creation — a story we don't understand nearly as well as we think we do from the story we were told in Prometheus.

At least that's what we're led to believe by Scott, who came to speak with us briefly while we were standing in the Hall of Heads. "We've reinvented the idea of Alien, which is that Covenant gets us a step closer to who and why was this thing designed to make human beings. And if you think it's them," Scott said, gesturing to the monolithic figures of the Engineers surrounding us, "you're dead wrong."
Anyone knows what he's talking about here, the bold part?  ???

Enoch

Quote from: Evanus on Mar 02, 2017, 10:15:24 PM
QuoteIf there was one thing that was made abundantly clear throughout the conversations on set, it's that Covenant, like Prometheus, is very much rooted in the idea of creation myths. Who created David? Man. Who created man? The Engineers. But who created the Engineers? And what comes next in the chain? What does man's creation create? Covenant is a film that looks to tell a broad-scale creation myth both backward and forwards at the same time. While it brings us closer to the events of Alien, to the birth of the biomechanical Xenomorph we all know and love, it also continues to look back at the story of human creation — a story we don't understand nearly as well as we think we do from the story we were told in Prometheus.

At least that's what we're led to believe by Scott, who came to speak with us briefly while we were standing in the Hall of Heads. "We've reinvented the idea of Alien, which is that Covenant gets us a step closer to who and why was this thing designed to make human beings. And if you think it's them," Scott said, gesturing to the monolithic figures of the Engineers surrounding us, "you're dead wrong."
Anyone knows what he's talking about here, the bold part?  ???

I m not sure... I think the human story will get a bit more complex in Covenant...
It seems Ridley said that humans are not created by Engineers but designed by other race,
and then just seeded by Engineers who were a servants to that superior beings.

N-Shifter

Quote from: Enoch on Mar 02, 2017, 10:19:44 PM
Quote from: Evanus on Mar 02, 2017, 10:15:24 PM
QuoteIf there was one thing that was made abundantly clear throughout the conversations on set, it's that Covenant, like Prometheus, is very much rooted in the idea of creation myths. Who created David? Man. Who created man? The Engineers. But who created the Engineers? And what comes next in the chain? What does man's creation create? Covenant is a film that looks to tell a broad-scale creation myth both backward and forwards at the same time. While it brings us closer to the events of Alien, to the birth of the biomechanical Xenomorph we all know and love, it also continues to look back at the story of human creation — a story we don't understand nearly as well as we think we do from the story we were told in Prometheus.

At least that's what we're led to believe by Scott, who came to speak with us briefly while we were standing in the Hall of Heads. "We've reinvented the idea of Alien, which is that Covenant gets us a step closer to who and why was this thing designed to make human beings. And if you think it's them," Scott said, gesturing to the monolithic figures of the Engineers surrounding us, "you're dead wrong."
Anyone knows what he's talking about here, the bold part?  ???

I m not sure... I think the human story will get a bit more complex in Covenant...
It seems Ridley said that humans are not created by Engineers but designed by other race,
and then just seeded by Engineers who were a servants to that superior beings.

Maybe we were seeded onto earth to be parasites as well, maybe there going to explore the idea that we're another form of created bio weapon just like the Xenos I mean, we pretty much spread across the planet destroying things that get in our way and multiplying...........too deep?

Darth Vile

Darth Vile

#86
That quote from Scott is a bit vague... and the use of grammar doesn't help... "Who and why was this thing designed to make human being"? I'm assuming he must be talking about the black goo? And I'm starting to think that we, humans, we're a mistake.

Cavalorn

Quote from: Evanus on Mar 02, 2017, 10:15:24 PM
QuoteIf there was one thing that was made abundantly clear throughout the conversations on set, it's that Covenant, like Prometheus, is very much rooted in the idea of creation myths. Who created David? Man. Who created man? The Engineers. But who created the Engineers? And what comes next in the chain? What does man's creation create? Covenant is a film that looks to tell a broad-scale creation myth both backward and forwards at the same time. While it brings us closer to the events of Alien, to the birth of the biomechanical Xenomorph we all know and love, it also continues to look back at the story of human creation — a story we don't understand nearly as well as we think we do from the story we were told in Prometheus.

At least that's what we're led to believe by Scott, who came to speak with us briefly while we were standing in the Hall of Heads. "We've reinvented the idea of Alien, which is that Covenant gets us a step closer to who and why was this thing designed to make human beings. And if you think it's them," Scott said, gesturing to the monolithic figures of the Engineers surrounding us, "you're dead wrong."
Anyone knows what he's talking about here, the bold part?  ???

I told comingsoon.net over Twitter that the line looked garbled and they have now changed it. It now reads:

''Covenant' gets us a step closer to who it was and why they decided to make human beings.'

Which barely makes any sense at all. I think it's a transcription error, personally; there's a missing word, and that word is 'afraid'.

So the Ridley Scott quote should read:

"The first 'Alien' was seven guys and gals in a steel hull, frankly the very old idea of 'The Old Dark House,'" Scott recollects. "Who's gonna die next? The fundamental basis of 'Alien' was a pretty old B-movie, but because of the cast and talent involved it came out an A+ movie. We've reinvented the idea of Alien, which is that Covenant gets us a step closer to who and why was this thing designed to make human beings afraid. And if you think it's them," Scott said, gesturing to the monolithic figures of the Engineers surrounding us, "you're dead wrong."

I can't see any other way of reading it. Ridley's talking about horror here, and why the Alien is so frightening to us humans. The point about Covenant is that it recasts the Alien's scariness as the product of design.

Protozoid

Quote from: Cavalorn on Mar 03, 2017, 09:51:00 AM
Quote from: Evanus on Mar 02, 2017, 10:15:24 PM
QuoteIf there was one thing that was made abundantly clear throughout the conversations on set, it's that Covenant, like Prometheus, is very much rooted in the idea of creation myths. Who created David? Man. Who created man? The Engineers. But who created the Engineers? And what comes next in the chain? What does man's creation create? Covenant is a film that looks to tell a broad-scale creation myth both backward and forwards at the same time. While it brings us closer to the events of Alien, to the birth of the biomechanical Xenomorph we all know and love, it also continues to look back at the story of human creation — a story we don't understand nearly as well as we think we do from the story we were told in Prometheus.

At least that's what we're led to believe by Scott, who came to speak with us briefly while we were standing in the Hall of Heads. "We've reinvented the idea of Alien, which is that Covenant gets us a step closer to who and why was this thing designed to make human beings. And if you think it's them," Scott said, gesturing to the monolithic figures of the Engineers surrounding us, "you're dead wrong."
Anyone knows what he's talking about here, the bold part?  ???

I told comingsoon.net over Twitter that the line looked garbled and they have now changed it. It now reads:

''Covenant' gets us a step closer to who it was and why they decided to make human beings.'

Which barely makes any sense at all. I think it's a transcription error, personally; there's a missing word, and that word is 'afraid'.

So the Ridley Scott quote should read:

"The first 'Alien' was seven guys and gals in a steel hull, frankly the very old idea of 'The Old Dark House,'" Scott recollects. "Who's gonna die next? The fundamental basis of 'Alien' was a pretty old B-movie, but because of the cast and talent involved it came out an A+ movie. We've reinvented the idea of Alien, which is that Covenant gets us a step closer to who and why was this thing designed to make human beings afraid. And if you think it's them," Scott said, gesturing to the monolithic figures of the Engineers surrounding us, "you're dead wrong."

I can't see any other way of reading it. Ridley's talking about horror here, and why the Alien is so frightening to us humans. The point about Covenant is that it recasts the Alien's scariness as the product of design.
Are you the Cavalorn who wrote that noted Prometheus Unbound post back in 2012? If so, thank you. I was baffled by the movie but was starting to piece together some of the stuff you articulated. It got me excited about delving deeper and now it's one of my favorite movies because of all the layers of implication.

That said, I don't think Scott was talking about horror. I think he was saying that Prometheus contained misdirection, and the creation of humans and the Aliens won't necessarily be what we expect based on that movie. He gestured to the statues to rule them out as the creators of the Engineers. The search will go on.

Corporal Hicks

I think he either means the Engineers making us and talking retroactively, or why the Aliens are able to gestate inside us? Only problem with that is that we know they'll grow from other creatures as well.

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